BeerAdvocate’s “Judging Beer”

BeerAdvocate Magazine’s Defending Beer article in the May 2007 issue, titled “Judging Beer”, speaks directly to the problem that we at BeerRiot are trying to solve.

“Beer, by its very nature is an inherently subjective commodity,” writes Andy Crouch. The rest of the article continues to list a number of the flaws in official contests and the fickle nature of popularity.

I couldn’t agree more. No expert can cover the tastes of every individual. Nor can any majority. It doesn’t matter how many people like a beer. If you like it, you like it – the fact that someone else dislikes it shouldn’t change that.

This is the aim of BeerRiot. Rather than bore you with the opinion of yet another expert, or confuse you with yet another popularity contest, we attempt to find those people that are actually more likely to have opinions you agree with. The scores you see here are based only on the opinions of those people.

We hope it will be just like learning about beers from your close friends. You know exactly which ones to trust and which ones to question. Here we hope to enable you to filter a much larger population automatically.

(By the way, if you are anywhere near Boston the weekend of June 16, you owe it to yourself to get tickets to BeerAdvocate’s American BeerFest. Nowhere will you find more beers to taste at one time.)